Welcome to the home page for Design by Katrina! Here you will find my latest creations in fabric, small and large wall handings, hand painted fabrics, a few words about my background and artistic career so far and where I would like to be in a few years.

All my fabric art wall hangings are original art works. In the early days when I first got back into sewing, I made a few quilts from kits but found out very quickly that I felt restricted, both in technique and design, so I modified almost every wall quilt I made to suit my expressiveness.

Even the fairly traditional quilt designs, suchs as Log Cabin or Courthouse Steps, just begged for new interpertations. So by using lovely floral fabrics I tried to create a dynamic flow and exciting color combinations.

My handpainted fabric panels reflect contemporary abstract art. Some I have used as wholecloth backgrouds and embellished with beads, ribbons, specialty yarns and hand dyed silk ribbons. Some I have cut up into faily free style forms and incorporated these pieces into my latest contemorary art expressions.

My small abstracts and fantasy birds are lots of fun to make. I use scraps from other projects to challenge myself creatively. Every morning I try to play with fabrics and somehow an image, a visual impression, a color scheme emerges and before I even know it I have the beginnings of a new art quilt.

Mostly I start from a couple of shapes, see how the occupy the space, see how they relate to the background I've chosen. Then a color or another shape catches my eye and I place it on the background fabric.

Lately I've been using my hand painted fabric pieces as starting points and just go from there. In other words, these are not preplanned in any way, they just happen. As I begin the sewing process, I might change things around or substitute a piece of fabric, alter the shap, emphasize an area of flow, etc.

Who doesn't love Impressionist art? Monet, Renoir, Seurat and many more European painters made tremendous innovations in the way people viewed and created art in their day. My first major commission was a Renoir landscape art piece in 2003. It took me over 4 months to complete, using over 350 different fabrics and over 3000 fabric squares assembled into a 115" x 75" wall hanging.

My recent fabric art designs involve a lot of curves and curlicues which sometimes presents a challenge as to sewing the various pieces and sections together. I do some raw edge applique art but also like turned under applique with machine embroidered decorative seams.

My fabric designs come quickly and joyously and can be used for impressionist art pieces, for landscape art, for any contemporary art pieces as well as abstract art.

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